Early in the morning (or late at night) on January 9th, I arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport to meet Josh Calderimis from Travis-CI. The printed sign with his name stayed at home, but by a happy coincidence, we met Josh almost immediately, and his first phrase was: "Toster? I am hungry, you got toasts?". I can't say that this question, asked with a smile on his face, left me speechless, but I didn't expect that every remaining day in snowy Moscow, the guys would come up with new and new jokes about the toaster and toasts.
By the way, we offer our official apologies for their absence at the recent conference; the simple truth is — they were eaten by the speakers before the presentation.
C Gregg Pollack from Envy Labs was no less amusing — meeting him a bit later, we smoothly navigated all the famous traffic jams, and instead of checking in at the hotel, he asked to take him around the city. As a tour, we decided to visit the city of Dzerzhinsky, where Gregg was most interested in the Nikolsky-Ugresha Monastery. Despite the bitter cold, we managed to feed the swan-geese that inhabit the area in large numbers.
As for Fabio Akita (from Codeminer42) and Douglas Campos (from RedHat), I had perhaps the most unusual dialogue of my life with them:
— Hi Alex, we froze a bit in Germany, and the pilot said it's even colder in Russia!
— Don't worry, I brought you hats and scarves so you don't die on the way.
— A hat is fine, but a scarf... what is it and how do you use it?
— In what sense?
— Where do you wear this? Show us.
After a few short magical hand gestures, everyone was packed and ready to leave the airport. However, until the very departure, the guys had a hard time moving around in the fresh air, as in their regions, winter temperatures rarely drop below 20 degrees Celsius — forgetting to check the weather forecast, these desperate guys arrived almost in t-shirts and shorts.
But the most important thing is that the absence of toasts and morning coffee did not hinder us from organizing a great event on Friday.
Half an hour before registration began, we noticed a considerable number of people waiting for it to start — this instilled confidence and hope that no presentation would go unheard, although we did experience some technical hiccups during the conference.
Gregg's presentation was the first in the program (which he was very happy about, as he promised many technical details that would be much harder to grasp after lunch) — he quickly took charge and started explaining to the conference participants the changes in the Rails 3 core code. Gregg hit the mark — the audience literally woke up, absorbing every word as he described the new techniques for use.
Next to take the stage was Fabio Akita — a speaker from far-off Brazil, who began to discuss various techniques for scaling high-performance and interactive applications on Rails.
Many attendees were specifically looking forward to his talk, as Fabio is one of the most prominent and recognizable 'drivers' of the Rails community in South America, and it was already clear before the conference started that the topic of application scaling would be in high demand.
Ivan Evtukhovich stepped onto the stage in great spirits and with a notably significant presentation — about how Evil Martians (to whom we extend our huge thanks for helping shape the conference program) worked on the Russian Groupon. This conversation (in the context of Rails) was the first of its kind in Russia, making the first presentation and viewing slides in Russian all the more interesting — until Ivan, nobody had ever discussed the organization of work in such popular and voluminous Rails projects from a Moscow stage.
Finally, the last presentation (before lunch) was dedicated to the practices of using JRuby — despite the burned-out converter and the inability to show slides on the big screen, Timofey Klimenko from HotSpot managed to discuss several interesting points about using JRuby and the JVM platform as a whole.
The conference featured simultaneous translation (foreign speakers were translated into Russian, while Russian presentations were translated into English) — Douglas Campos, who spoke second to last, noted that Timofey’s presentation contained very interesting moments that he himself intended to discuss.
Then there was a two-course lunch (the speakers finished off the third course for everyone))) — a great opportunity to chat with colleagues.
Perhaps lunch didn't meet everyone's expectations, but understand that we’re not the ones cooking ) And anyway, toster is primarily about knowledge and the chance to engage with renowned speakers:
And just to chat
Increased concentration of gray hoodies:
During the conference, the lounge area was open all the time, where you could lounge on bean bags and chat with friends. Thanks to Reg.ru for providing popcorn and cola!
After lunch, we had the honor of seeing Konstantin Khaze, who couldn't attend in person due to visa issues, but that didn't stop him from delivering an insightful talk about the history of Sinatra, how it was created, and what the future holds for this remarkable project.
One of the most memorable talks was by Joshua Calderimis:
Josh became the star of the {ruby} conference toster — it quickly became clear that he intended not only to share interesting details (related to Travis CI) but also to put on a little show, getting the entire audience on their feet.
His trademark shirt, smile, and fantastic slides on napkins will definitely be remembered for a long time, as will the way of effectively breaking a large product into components and managing it in that form.
Douglas Campos, tired after the flight and unable to catch sleep at night due to the time difference, was resting during his colleagues' talks…
… but when it was his turn to take the stage and talk about JRuby, he visibly perked up. Taking the microphone, he literally began to bombard the audience with his short and energetic phrases — I think after Douglas's words, many regained their faith that JRuby is convenient, fast, and effective, making it a worthy alternative to MRI.
Finally, the youngest speaker — Jonathan Layton, who is just 22 years old and counting the days until his next birthday, talked about Active Record, in which he had a direct role as a member of the Rails Core team. John is a promising young man who pursued higher education only because "it helps to better understand some mathematical and logical problems, but otherwise it is useless" 🙂 Of course, this was a joke on his part with a grain of truth, but John actually comes across as a surprisingly wise specialist for his age, and soon he will likely take the position of CTO in a London startup. But I promised him not to disclose details, so I will keep my word.
At the end of the conference, there was the traditional prize draw — this time, along with gadgets from Yota and tickets to the next toaster, we raffled off branded Khabramayki and our new board game "":
As a final note — the afterparty:
We hope you had a great impression of the conference .toaster {ruby} — we will definitely hold another Ruby conference, as we now have foreign guys ready to help.
The next toaster will be dedicated to JS and will take place on Friday, April 13 — don't miss our devilish show.
P.S. Special thanks to the guys from for helping prepare the conference program. By the way, they on Ruby on Rails development, and for conference participants, they provided discount coupons that were included in the participant packages.
Source: habr.com
